User blog:Kiadony/That quarian conspiracy theory (AU)
Ok, this is something I promised to do. Note that this definitely doesn't fit into Mass Effect canon and is as such part of an AU. It started over a century ago, when quarians still lived on their Homeworld. They were ruled by a unified government and were scientifically and technologically advanced beyond many other races. At some point, the geth were created, and the prospects of their increasingly autonomous development and growing sophistication caused a mixed reaction in the populace. Some were happy to have the artificial intelligence work for them, but others feared being replaced and questioned the future of their own species. Military officials feared the most for their influential positions and prestige, since the geth were posited to make quarian involvement in warfare entirely unnecessary. The tensions were fueled further by the discovery of an ancient tome seemingly describing a previously unknown part of quarian history. It contained a detailed and scientifically plausible description of quarian ancestors that were superior to the contemporary quarians in every aspect. In combination with the drive to avoid becoming “useless” and “unnecessary” due to the geth, it sparked a social movement that, at first, promoted self-improvement and discovery of inner strengths, but later expanded to cover a wide spectrum of ideologies, the most extreme of which promoted downright hatred of the geth and radical means to restore quarians to their “former glory.” Facing replacement by the geth, the Admirals of the Fleet devised a plan that would keep them in power for the years to come: They would organize the Migrant Fleet as a nomadic space colony that would be free of the geth. Their plan garnered support from the parts of the populace that were generally unhappy with the existence of the geth, and from the scientists who sought to bring back the super-quarians through experiments that were generally considered morally unacceptable, but that the Admirals would permit them to covertly carry out on select ships of the Fleet. Citing limited capacity, the Admirals subjected those wishing to relocate to the Fleet to screening, and only those who were deemed “worthy” of becoming a new generation of super-quarians were admitted to the Fleet. In order to gain credibility, they initiated a massive attack on the planet surface and blamed it on the geth. In the aftermath of the attack, scarcely any surface life had survived, and the geth were seriously set back in their development. For several generations, the Migrant Fleet was a site of many experiments. At first, the scientists earnestly tried create super-quarians, however, as one experiment after another failed to yield the expected unimaginable results, and as the populace began to question where the species was headed, the Admirals focused increasingly more on simply keeping the people under control. Apart from performing subtle brainwashing and hammering in anti-geth propaganda, which still placed the blame for what happened on the planet on the geth, they artificially weakened the quarians’ immune systems using special substances mixed into the food. Fearing that a populate that became aware of a prosperous quarian colony would question their authority, the Admirals also secretly sought out and destroyed most colonies, while publicly claiming that all known colonies have failed or were destroyed by the geth. Any quarian that seemed even slightly suspicious to them could be exiled or executed in secret and without due process. The last generation of Admirals ended up having to deal with a species headed straight for extinction, and with growing instability of their own position, as they couldn't keep covering up their atrocious acts much longer. Some quarians began to realize that the story of the geth uprising that they’ve been told didn't make much sense, while others figured out that their immune systems couldn't have possibly regressed so much naturally. In response, the Admirals became paranoid, and deployed increasingly harsher measures to clamp down on dissent. Fleet officers and marines went through severe brainwashing and memory erasure procedures to ensure loyalty and to prevent sensitive information about their operations from spreading among the populace. Some areas of research were made effectively illegal, under the usual threat of extrajudicial execution or exile. But they couldn’t keep the populace from longing for their Homeworld — and for some, that translated to a desire to retake it by force. However, others were convinced that a war with the geth was untenable and even suicidal. The Admirals were also split over the issue, and they grew entrenched and apathetic because of their inability to come to an agreement. In truth, even without a war with the geth, there wasn’t much life left in the severely aged Fleet ships and the shrinking, desperate populace. At the time, it seemed that the species was going extinct soon, one way or another. But only because nobody could have foreseen what happened next… From this point, the actual AU story started, but that's not the subject of this blog. So there you go, Blitz :) Thanks to my brother who helped with the writing. Category:Blog posts